Domestic Affairs

At its 18th National Congress in November 2012, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) named Xi Jinping to succeed Pres. Hu Jintao as the party’s general secretary. Li Keqiang was named as the second-ranking member of the party’s seven-member Political Bureau (Politburo), which collectively governs China. Xi was expected to succeed Hu as president of China and head of state, and Li was set to replace Wen Jiabao as premier. Meanwhile, membership in the all-powerful Political Bureau transitioned from a fourth to a fifth generation, reaffirming the pattern of a leadership transition every decade. In a significant departure from precedent, Hu announced that he would retire from all of his leadership positions, including the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, which controlled China’s armed forces—unlike former leaders Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin (Hu’s immediate predecessor), each of whom had retained that post after stepping down from his other positions. Jiang, who stood next to Hu at the congress as the new leadership was announced, played a key role in the arrangements. Jiang’s Shanghai faction was widely believed to dominate the opaque balance of power in the new Political Bureau.

While the leadership transition took place as scheduled, the party’s legitimacy and direction were put into question by the dramatic fall of Bo Xilai, Chongqing’s party secretary, who had been a rising star in the CCP. During his tenure Bo rapidly developed Chongqing while also aggressively cracking down on organized crime. In February one of his most important lieutenants, Wang Lichun, Chongqing’s police chief, went to nearby Chengdu and sought refuge with the U.S. consulate there. Before Wang surrendered to law-enforcement officials from Beijing, he revealed evidence that in November 2011 Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, killed British businessman and Bo family adviser Neil Heywood by poisoning him with cyanide.

Gu was arrested following an investigation by party authorities; Bo was ousted as Chongqing party secretary and in April was suspended from his other party positions. In August Gu, who had confessed to killing Heywood, was tried and convicted of murder and received a suspended death sentence. After further investigations of Bo, the party expelled him, claiming that he had engaged in corruption on a vast scale during his tenures as party secretary in both Dalian and Chongqing; he was subsequently arrested and awaited trial.

The party leadership was also embarrassed by the death of Ling Gu, the son of Political Bureau member Ling Jihua. The younger Ling died after crashing his Ferrari sports car on a Beijing highway in March. Internet censors blocked references to the crash, and the elder Ling, an important ally of President Hu, was removed from his post in September. The incident highlighted the extravagant lifestyles of the leadership’s family members. Bloomberg News and the New York Times also reported that the families of Xi Jinping and Wen Jiabao had accumulated vast wealth. The Internet sites of both publications were immediately blocked after they ran those stories.

Xi subsequently announced that fighting corruption would be his first priority after taking office, warning that corruption in high places had led to regime change in other countries. Nonetheless, he also began his term as general secretary by visiting Shenzhen—following in the footsteps of Deng Xiaoping, who had done the same three years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, with the party in disarray and in ill repute with the public. Xi’s visit was a symbolic affirmation that the policies of the previous two decades that had made China the world’s second largest economy were to continue despite the challenges posed by the Bo case. Meanwhile, Li Keqiang suggested that long-awaited reforms to state-owned enterprises that dominated the economy, the household-registration system that prevented rural citizens from becoming urban residents, and property rights were to be implemented on his watch as premier.

Unrest continued in Tibet. In one week in October, seven Tibetans self-immolated in protest against Chinese rule in the autonomous region. By most accounts, between 90 and 100 Tibetans had set themselves on fire since 2009, with some 60 deaths. The Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of inciting the self-immolations and increased security in Lhasa and other major Tibetan religious centres.

In April blind country lawyer Chen Guangcheng, who had exposed forced sterilizations in his native Shandong province, escaped local house arrest and fled to Beijing, where he took refuge at the U.S. embassy. After negotiating with the U.S. State Department, the Chinese government eventually allowed Chen and his immediate family to travel to the U.S. for medical treatment and to pursue his legal education.

In October novelist Mo Yan was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature. Mo refused to sign a petition calling for the release of dissident Liu Xiaobo, who had been given the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2010 and was serving an 11-year sentence for subverting state authority. While delivering his acceptance speech in Oslo, Mo defended censorship as necessary and said that his books contained everything he wanted to say.

China’s military modernization continued in 2012. Its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, became partly operational in November after fighter jets successfully landed on its deck.

Public pressure to more accurately depict Beijing’s chronic and serious air pollution forced municipal officials to begin reporting particulate levels as small as 2.5 microns in January. Previous reports had included only particles down to 10 microns and not the smaller ones that had been shown to pose a major health threat for residents of China’s highly polluted cities. Environmental activism across the country forced other actions during 2012. In July authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan canceled a $1.6 billion molybdenum-copper alloy plant after violent protests. Opposition in the wealthy eastern seaboard provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang led officials to cancel a wastewater-pipeline project in July and to suspend work on an $8.9 billion petrochemical facility in October.

The worst flooding in six decades hit Beijing in July, killing 77 people and revealing deficiencies in the rapidly growing capital’s infrastructure. In September earthquakes killed more than 80 people in southwestern Yunnan province. Man-made disasters included several coal-mining accidents. In August and September alone, 45 perished from a gas explosion in a coal mine in Sichuan, and 20 more died on a train inside a Gansu coal mine.

In December the world’s longest high-speed railway connected Guangzhou and Beijing. It reduced the 2,298-km (1,428-mi) trip between the two cities to some eight hours.

Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents protested in July and September against a proposal by the Hong Kong government to introduce additional patriotic education in the special administrative region’s (SAR’s) schools. The protests were one of several manifestations of growing anti-China sentiment in the SAR, governed since 1997 by China under “one country, two systems,” which gave China sovereignty and ultimate authority over Hong Kong but guaranteed Hong Kong’s capitalist economy and allowed limited autonomy. The pro-Beijing CY Leung (Leung Chun Ying) became the island’s chief executive in July, whereas pro-democracy parties in Hong Kong won 27 seats in September, giving them an effective veto over legislation.

China won a total of 88 medals, including 38 golds, at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The country had the second highest number of medals, behind the U.S.

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